The campaign began quietly. Students studying abroad were told to return home. Many did, and their classmates didn’t hear from them afterwards. For those who needed extra incentive to get moving, police detained their families back home.

The increasing sophistication and reach of the country’s AI-enabled police-state apparatus mean that it is possible that Liu’s peaceful, moderate and incremental goals for political liberalization might lapse into dormancy for the foreseeable future.

Surely, I am not a believer of the idea that history repeats itself. For this idea simply presupposes the existence of an underlying cause that necessitates repeated happenings of certain events in history.